Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Pat Farrell:

No, you ... Sorry, I'm endeavouring to give some context to my answer. I was also conscious that there was a smaller number of people working on prudential regulation. But can I say to you, Senator, that I mean, the whole backdrop, the whole policy context, the whole focus was on consumer regulation. And I made this point in Kenmare and I got some criticism for it at the time because what I said was that, ultimately, when the public woke up to the reality of what happened, they weren't interested in knowing, "I don't know what a tracker mortgage is", they wanted to know, "Is my money safe?" And what I'm saying is and I think you .. everyone will appreciate and understand this, the ultimate guarantor of the consumer's protections is strong prudential regulation. And my belief was that the starting point for the focus was too skewed towards consumer and conduct of business and I think the evidence that has been given thus far by Mr. Brian Patterson, by the expert reports have all validated that as well and have remarked upon it.